Cosmia

  • Update

    Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you’re having a good day wherever you are, whenever you’re reading this. There are fun times to be had in the spooky season if you look in the right place. Unfortunately, for those living in the wrong place such happiness is harder to find. As I type this from the comfort of this room more children die in Gaza. Earlier today Israel hit a refugee camp with an airstrike because they thought some big shot commander was there. Is his death worth all the others killed in the blast? I don’t think so, and it’s not completely clear if they even got him. Similar atrocities happen elsewhere in places we pay less attention to. By sheer luck of birth I get to watch from the sidelines instead of being directly involved in the vast violence humanity is capable of. Is it even okay to be happy under these circumstances? I guess it kind of has to be. If it is not okay to be happy when so much in the world is not, then when can we?

    We shouldn’t look away from what’s happening. Doing so helps enable its continuation. But we don’t need to add even more suffering to the pool. We don’t need to make their unhappiness our own. The pain we experience watching will never match the pain of actually being there. So if you find something positive in your life, I don’t think it’s wrong to embrace it.

    Such are my idle ruminations. This is not the post I planned to end this month with. Far from it. But since that one needs more time in the oven this is what you’ll get for now. I’m not going to rush a post just to meet some deadline I made up. It’s my fault, but I’m not going to make you readers suffer a worse post because of it. I assure you I haven’t forgotten this blog in the slightest. There’s a lot of stuff stuck in the drafts at the moment. Some of it will stay there. But I like to think the ones that make it out will be of good quality. A lot of it will be niche, but to be fair that’s pretty much my whole blog any way. So I hope you look forward to it. For the record, there’s more than just posts on the horizon from me. But there’s also posts.

    Yuuko Amamiya, a woman with long dark blue hair, clad in a black winter garb. She has a slight smile and is side eyeing the POV character (Hiro in this case). She says, "Oh, so you have decided to sweep things under the carpet. If you do that at your age, you will regret that decision in the future."
    Yes ma’am

  • This is Going to Happen Again

    Last Saturday–October 7th, 2023–Hamas militants launched a surprise attack against Israel, bringing several years of relative calm in the ongoing …

    This is Going to Happen Again

    First time using the reblog feature, figured this one was well worth sharing. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

    By the way you can expect another post from me later this month on something completely unrelated to this conflict.

  • Pikmin 2 Game Trade Review

    Welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews, where I post my in-depth takes on whatever random ass game my friend wanted me to play. This time around I’m taking a look at a game that got a rerelease pretty recently, Pikmin 2. I played Pikmin 3 on the Wii U almost as soon as it got released, and I adored it. For whatever reason I never went back to try the older games until this opportunity arose. I still haven’t played the first Pikmin game, and it’ll be some time before I finish Pikmin 4. As such, I won’t focus too much on comparing this game’s quality in the context of the series. Not to say I won’t bring up any comparisons at all, but I will do my best to evaluate this game on its own terms. I must also mention that this review will contain spoilers, though this is not exactly the kind of game where spoilers matter that much. With all that out of the way, let’s get into it.

    By pressing here you can get into it.
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  • Pay-to-Win Games: Digital gambling

    Hello,

    Been a while since I’ve posted on Mr. Cosmia’s blog eh? guess it’s time to change that. It’s Spartan for those who don’t realize this yet. Gaming has been a large part of my identity and I can’t imagine my life without it. If I didn’t pick up that PS2 controller back in 2007 and stick with it as a hobby, who knows where I’d be? certainly not creating this post as gaming is what led me to meeting Mr. Cosmia in the first place. But even with the positive benefits of gaming, there are some certain, scummy aspects to it that have become more prevalent in recent years. And one of those is pay-to-win games.

    Read the rest here

  • On the Subject of Pikmin Bloom

    Hi I’m back, I’m done with grad school. Got a degree and shit. Pretty cool. Remember that Nintendo Direct where they announced Pikmin 4? Some of you might not have watched that at all. So Shigeru Miyamoto’s telling us he wants to tell us some stuff about Pikmin. That’s promising right? Yeah it was, Pikmin 4’s coming out this month. Good shit. But before there was Pikmin 4 there was an explanation of Pikmin Bloom. They gave us a mobile game before Pikmin 4. If it weren’t for the announcement afterwards I would have bitter feelings towards the game. I probably wouldn’t have tried it. Fortunately, I got my Pikmin 4, or the anticipation of it. I couldn’t resolve that anticipation with Pikmin 4. Instead I could give Pikmin Bloom a shot right away. I never got into Pokemon Go! yet I went for Pikmin Bloom. How did I get taken in so thoroughly? Let’s get into it.

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  • 23

    The year is 2023 and I am nearing the end of my 23rd year on this earth. Actually wait wouldn’t it be my 24th year and when I actually turn 24 the 24th year is completed? I think so, but either way I’m 23 right now and that will stop being the case soon. As such, it seems like now’s as good a time as any to discuss one of my favorite Jimmy Eat World songs, 23. While I heard this song before I turned 23 I only truly appreciated it recently. Is there something special about the song that makes it resonate particularly well with 23 year olds? Maybe, but that’s not exactly why I rediscovered it.

    Read the rest here
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  • Video Game Preservation, and why it’s important

    Hello readers of Cosmia’s blog, it’s me again, Spartan with another article that some of you might find fascinating. Since their creation back in the 80s, video games have come in various forms over the years, most being limited to arcades before gradually moving on to home consoles and making them readily available to the average household. But as the years pass, certain games fall into obscurity and are locked to their specific consoles as technology improves. Granted, there are some older games that have been salvaged through online stores on modern consoles (virtual console on the Nintendo Wii anyone?) but it’s not a guarantee that all games will be ported into the online stores. And that’s one of the main problems being a gamer in general: keeping up with the trends requires stronger hardware, and said stronger hardware isn’t going to come with all of the bells and whistles that the previous generation of consoles had.

    Read the rest here

  • I Devoured Blue Lock so Now It’s Rambling Time

    Do you follow anime, are you aware of what’s hip and happening? I do, and let me tell you, Blue Lock is both hip and happening. As a chronic hipster I tend to be a bit skeptical of the new big thing. I won’t automatically reject it, but I often find better shows elsewhere. I think my symptoms are getting milder because I actually kind of dig this one. Regardless of how my Saturday goes I know I’ve got the new Blue Lock episode to look forward to. I can hit the bong, make some popcorn, sit down on my couch, and watch some dumbass cocky kids play sportsball. It’s a guaranteed good time.

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  • Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Game Trade Review

    Once upon a time a friend of mine wanted me to play Persona 5, as it was apparently the best thing since sliced bread or something like that. I had heard of Persona 5 beforehand (If I recall, it was in the first ever copy of GameInformer that I ever received) but didn’t have much incentive to try it, as I already had quite a few things that I was busy doing. However, after much persistence from my friend I agreed on one condition: He complete the 3 main games in the Kingdom Hearts franchise (1, 2 and 3). Said games I also thought were pretty great as I grew up with them, and still have a fondness for them to this day. Following his completion of each game he gave a in depth review of them, including story, gameplay and area rankings (my personal favorite part) and I picked up on that following my completion of Persona 5. Thus, the game trade was born and over the years we’ve subjected each other to games we’d think the other one would like, or in my case, be subjected to some of the most frustrating games in existence that I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. And that leads us to the most recent iteration, where I have to play Disco Elysium: The Final Cut.

    Read the rest here
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  • A Plague Tale: Innocence Game Trade Review

    Welcome to the Game Trade Review, where I give my take on games a friend had me play after playing it one time. Today I will talk about a game I finished over the holidays. A lovely game about kids getting their lives disrupted by religious fanatics and a mysterious disease. A Plague Tale: Innocence was never the kind of game you’d play for escapism, but it’s certainly providing even less of that today. It is worth noting that this game came out in 2019, so anything that happened since then has no influence on the making of this game. I’m not here to write some half-assed college essay about the role of disease in media. I’m sure there’s some interesting things to be said there, but I’m good. I’m here to talk about what I think about this game. So let’s get into it. Disclaimer: this review will contain spoilers.

    Read It Here
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